Enigmatic Leader of Iran Backs Overture, for Now

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke at a meeting of Revolutionary Guards commanders in a photo released by his office last week.

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, via Associated Press

By THOMAS ERDBRINK

September 23, 2013

TEHRAN — This is Hassan Rouhani’s moment. The toast of the United Nations, the new Iranian president is busy granting interviews to select audiences and possibly cramming in a meeting with President Obama — the first such high-level get-together since the 1979 revolution. But when he stands before the world to speak on Tuesday, he will do so as the loyal representative of Iran’s supreme leader, the ultimate authority behind the country’s recent diplomatic charm offensive.

Since his election in June, Mr. Rouhani has made no secret of his wish to reach an accord with the West on Iran’s nuclear program — and no secret that the only reason he can reach out so conspicuously is that he has the support, for now anyway, of one man, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

“Rouhani can only attempt to have direct talks because the supreme leader has agreed to it; otherwise, Rouhani would not be in New York now,” said Hamid-Reza Taraghi, an insider who is one of the few people trusted to interpret for the public the supreme leader’s sermons and speeches. “The president and his team enter any talks only under the leader’s direct command.”

An enigmatic and cunning man, Ayatollah Khamenei, 74, is the one who gave Mr. Rouhani the authority to pursue a deal with the United States, top aides to Mr. Rouhani and outside experts say, and could just as easily cut off support — as he has done to some Iranian leaders before, including Mr. Rouhani.

Ayatollah Khamenei sees himself as a sort of referee of Iran’s complex political system, sitting in judgment of the politicians he anoints to lead the country in what are often sharply different directions. In 1997, for example, he blessed the reformist candidacy of Mohammad Khatami, who relaxed some social restrictions and allowed more press freedom.

But he allowed the hard-liners to undermine Mr. Khatami’s presidency, and in 2005 he pinwheeled to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the strident nationalist hard-liner, who denied the Holocaust and antagonized the West for much of his eight years in office.

This year, in a surprise to almost all Iran watchers, Ayatollah Khamenei has seemed to get behind Mr. Rouhani’s diplomatic push, talking in somewhat opaque but nevertheless conciliatory terms of “heroic flexibility.” And on Monday, in another gesture of support for Mr. Rouhani, Iran released 80 political prisoners. But the question for many here is, how much room will the supreme leader allow for diplomacy before pulling the rug out from under Mr. Rouhani?

This is not the first go-round for Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr. Rouhani, himself something of a prodigy who was once the darling of the clerics who founded the Islamic republic. In 2003 Mr. Rouhani, then the chief nuclear negotiator, persuaded Ayatollah Khamenei to suspend uranium enrichment for several months in hopes of reaching a nuclear deal. But the negotiations broke down, and Mr. Rouhani was banished from the circles of power before being resurrected this spring.

From Ayatollah Khamenei’s perspective, experts say, it makes perfect sense to stand back and allow Mr. Rouhani to conduct talks with the country’s main adversary.

“Everybody understands that Supreme Leader Khamenei is in a win-win situation,” said Mojtaba Mousavi, an Iranian political commentator who is often briefed by officials close to the leader. He explained that if talks lead to the reduction or elimination of the economic sanctions that have damaged Iran’s economy, Ayatollah Khamenei will get the credit for approving the new negotiating strategy.

But Ayatollah Khamenei can also take the credit if the talks should collapse. “If talks fail to reach any results, he will be praised for having proved his warnings over the dishonesty by the West towards Iran,” said Mr. Mousavi. “In that case his doubts will be proved once again.”

Experts here say that Ayatollah Khamenei, who was appointed supreme leader in 1989, is interested in testing the flexibility of the United States in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, which it says is for peaceful uses but the West says is a cover for developing nuclear weapons.

“The leader is giving the U.S. an opportunity to change its ways, although he doubts such a thing can ever happen,” said Mr. Taraghi, who stressed that Ayatollah Khamenei had “permitted” Mr. Rouhani to explore possibilities. “Our leader is waiting to see whether the U.S. will follow Iran in taking a step towards positive engagement.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

But as Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, work the corridors and back rooms of the United Nations this week, their mandate will be limited, restricted by the supreme leader to the nuclear program and possibly Syria, those close to him say.

For all the attention paid to Iran’s new tone of moderation, insiders here say the supreme leader will never compromise his basic positions. “We have no intention to change,” said Mr. Taraghi. “Our ideology will remain the same. Iran will remain the same even after possible talks.”

By this he meant that Iran would never recognize the state of Israel or stop supporting Palestinian groups fighting what it calls “the Zionist entity.” In nuclear matters, it means accepting nothing less than full recognition of what Iran says is its “right” to a nuclear program under its own control. Support for the Syrian government will continue, as will Iran’s overall confrontational stance toward the West.

The change in Iran’s diplomatic language is a new tactic to be explored, Mr. Taraghi and others said. Iran’s supreme leader is mainly interested to see whether the United States has shifted its position and is ready to recognize Iran as a main power in the Middle East.

Suspicions of American intentions and policies lie at the core of Ayatollah Khamenei’s beliefs. “The domination system spreads war, poverty and immorality with a specific mechanism which is dividing the world between oppressors and oppressed,” he said in a speech for commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps last week. He said Iran’s resistance to American policies is the reason it is being pressured “by imposing sanctions, and by efforts to impose a civil war and a coup in Iran.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has often emphasized that he is “a revolutionary, not a diplomat,” also urged the president and his team never to forget the nature of their rivals. “It is good and necessary to have flexible approaches sometimes and somewhere,” he said, citing a theory he called “heroic leniency,” in which “you can show leniency to the rival, while never forgetting his goals.”

While many advocates of détente have interpreted this remark as illustrating Ayatollah Khamenei’s readiness to compromise, his close supporters say it means that he sees America as an eternal enemy that needs to be approached with different tactics at different times.

“Our leader is convinced the ultimate goal of the U.S. is to foil our spirit of confrontation and change our behavior,” Mr. Mousavi said. “The basis of our revolution is fighting the hegemonic powers.”

It was a surprise when Iran’s hard-liners, who had held sway for eight years in tandem with Ayatollah Khamenei, lost to Mr. Rouhani in the presidential elections in June. They and the institutions they control — the Revolutionary Guards, the nationwide Friday Prayer venues, the judiciary and the state broadcaster — have all been ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei not to sabotage Mr. Rouhani’s effort with criticism or controversial remarks.

This is not to say that the hard-liners are out of power, nor are they excluded from deciding Mr. Rouhani’s mandate for negotiations. “We have coordinated our policies in order to talk with a single voice, which for now is the government’s voice,” Mr. Mousavi said.

It is almost the polar opposite of Mr. Ahmadinejad, the former president, who was allowed to antagonize world leaders using a tactic he called “active diplomacy,” which ultimately helped create an atmosphere in which many countries supported sanctions against Iran.

Iran’s establishment now agrees across the board that Mr. Rouhani’s diplomatic offensive can reinvigorate the stalled talks over Iran’s nuclear program and potentially reduce sanctions, analysts say.

“This is about convincing the U.S. that the Islamic republic is a big dam against their policies in the region,” Mr. Taraghi said. “They need to realize the huge price they are paying for their hegemonic policies in the Middle East. It is better for them to find common ground with us.”

That does not mean, however, that the two traditional enemies will become fast friends overnight.

“Whatever happens,” Mr. Taraghi said, “don’t expect a U.S. embassy to open up in Tehran any time soon.”